Kanye West fans are keeping the feud alive with Taylor Swift, this after hatching a scheme that was hinted at earlier this year. On the release date of Swift’s latest album, Reputation, West’s “Hey Mama” track was streamed 700,000 times in a bid to knock Swift from appearing at the top of the charts.
The Ringer writes:
The Kanye streamers claimed small victories as the day progressed. “Hey Mama” quickly reached the top of the “Spiking Tracks” list on Last.fm, a music-listening tracking service. Later the song became the most-streamed song in the U.S. on the platform. “Hey Mama” climbed to no. 33 of the iTunes charts in New Zealand and reached the top 100 in Australia, according to screencaps fans posted in the Facebook event.
But the focus quickly shifted from fervently tracking metrics to celebrating the day itself. A DJ offered photo evidence that he was paying “Hey Mama” on a Norwegian radio show. Kanye stans in Armenia, where one attendee said “Hey Mama” reached no. 3 on the iTunes charts, got a shout-out. Wave emoji gushed forth like a tsunami. Multiple fans said that listening to the song again and again had brought them to tears.
By the time the dust had settled on Saturday morning, fans had nudged the “Hey Mama” stream count on Spotify up from 23.6 million to 24.3 million, or about 700,000 spins. That would seemingly be enough to land the song on Spotify’s daily Top 200 list, which bottoms out just below 500,000 streams. But the song never appeared on any Spotify chart, either because the streams weren’t all amassed in a 24-hour window or because Spotify caught onto the scheme. (Spotify declined to comment on how it finds and addresses suspicious streaming activity.)
While doesn’t appear that “Hey Mama Day” managed to do what it was intended, it’s pretty obvious that there remains a deep line drawn in the sand between the two superstars.
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Photo: WENN.com
